__economic thinking about sports__

Play leads to pay

Using survey data that followed the lives of thousands of Germans from 1984 to 2006, the German Socio-Economic Panel study, Mr. Lechner found that sports-playing adults saw a boost in income of about 1,200 euros per year over 16 years when compared to their less active peers. That translates into a 5-10% rate of return on sports activities, roughly equal to the benefit of an extra year’s worth of education.

It turns out, according to Mr. Lechner’s calculations, that only about one-fifth of that increase comes as a result of better health. “Although health and other subjective variables contribute substantially to the effects of sports activity, there remains a large unobserved and unexplained component,” Mr. Lechner writes.

Some of that unexplained component could be chalked up to social networking benefits. In fact, the sports-playing men in Mr. Lechner’s study reported a significantly higher level of “social functioning” than did the less active men.